A PRIMARY school in a cathedral city has been unveiled as the first in the country where not a single pupil speaks English as their first language.

Of 440 pupils at Gladstone primary school in Peterborough, 358 speak Punjabi Urdu at home, 23 speak Dari, an official language from Afghanistan, while 15 speak Lithuanian and 11 Latvian. Another 16 languages are also spoken, figures from the Department for Education show.

The school has 28 teaching assistants, with 10 speaking Urdu and one speaking Polish and Russian.

The potential difficulties in communication don’t seem to have affected the school’s performance, however.

Last week a glowing report from Ofsted gave the school a “good” score in every area – a vast improvement on the previous year when its rating was “inadequate”.

Headmistress Christine Parker said: “More and more of the world is going bilingual. The culture at our school is not to see bilingualism as a difficulty.”

She said the school tries to make up for the absence of native English speaking pupils by running a “buddy” system with children in schools in nearby Stamford, Lincolnshire.

“Otherwise,” she explained, “ours don’t have friends who speak English as a first language.”

Official figures suggest only 24 speak English as their first language but headmaster Tim Smith believes even that number is exaggerated because some parents did not properly understand the question.

Of the 440 pupils at Gladstone primary school, 358 list their first language as Urdu

Mrs ParkerIt can be better if they are fluent in their mother tongue. If they haven’t got the foundations, but have been mixing it up with English from an early age, it can be very difficult.

Mrs Parker

Jonathan Lewis, assistant director of children’s services at Peterborough City Council, said more than 100 languages are now spoken in the city.

The proportion of children speaking English as a second language has risen from 19 to 35 per cent in recent years. Stewart Jackson, Conservative MP for Peterborough, said the city could not cope with another influx of immigrants and is urging the council not to accept large numbers of families being moved out of London because of the Government’s housing benefits cap.

Mrs Parker said the children arriving in her reception class only struggle if their parents have taught them fragments of English in addition to their mother tongue. She said: “It can be better if they are fluent in their mother tongue. If they haven’t got the foundations, but have been mixing it up with English from an early age, it can be very difficult.”

She said modern multiculturalism was merely a continuation of British history, adding: “Britain has always been a country of immigration. You only have to watch Who Do You Think You Are? to see how many famous people have their origins far away from the British Isles.“Our pupils will grow up wanting to play cricket for England...and support England and Pakistan.”

Last week the head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw, praised the teaching methods in London secondary schools despite high numbers of pupils speaking a second language.